I want to explore the path that makes sure my ship and cargo are not worth the ganking-loss.
For many of these questions some will want to answer “RNGesus!” I’m aware there is RNG involved here. But all RNG has average outcomes and ranges. I suppose, for the best case scenario, I can pretend all cargo and modules drop. With that said, lets move on.
Both Fitting and Cargo UI’s have an ISK estimated price. What I’m not sure of is how much of this stuff drops? Also, what kind of valuable things drops from a ship if we exclude modules and inventories?
What does it cost the suicide gaker? Is there some rule of thumb that estimates how much the ganker will have to spend to overcome say 10k EHP?
I plan to setup insta-dock/undock. It seems that if I do that the gankers won’t be able to cargo scan me in time, yes? I’m not sure how fast this would be for gankers: Insta-lock + cargo scan + thrid-party valuation bot (illegal I’m sure but that won’t stop anything) to run and give advice. Does insta-dock/undock make it so gankers have to go in blind? https://wiki.bravecollective.com/public/dojo/wiki/instadock-instaundock
I don’t want to entertain the ideas about under 2second alignment and high EHP tanks.
That’s it for now, thanks for reading and any input you want to give.
You won’t achieve this, because gankers will gank just about anything, just for the tears. They make enough on ganking and other activities that they can afford to throw away ships on empty, bare targets.
You can reduce the likelihood, by making yourself not a clearly profitable target. You will still need to pay attention to the route ahead, activity in the area etc.
The calculations themselves will vary with security status of system (because Concord time changes), prices of gear, efficiency of the gankers etc. For a decent look at the process of estimating the “is it worth it” math, you could start here (Reddit post from 2yr ago, not too out of date): https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/sf9bsg/how_to_calculate_cost_of_ganking/
RNG is indeed a factor but most of these calcs assume roughly 50% of the estimated value of fittings + cargo will drop. (Obviously the value of the ship doesn’t drop, but it is a factor in attractiveness, “how big are my killmails” etc.)
By default, the loot fairy will flip a coin for every module, stack, or single item in your ship’s cargo and either drop it or destroy it.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe there is time to lock you if you do your instas correctly*. An insta dock will dock as soon as you come out of warp if you engage the auto pilot en-route to the station. And insta undock will warp you away instantly before your undocking invulnerability drops, and a target in warp can’t be locked. Even if you are vulnerable for some period of time, it would be less than a second and that’s pretty darn hard to exploit.
If you collide with something on undock things can go south, but if you suspect you’re going to collide you can dock up again while invulnerable /unless/ the station is one of the few ‘kickout’ stations that put you outside of docking range.
It’s never a good idea to undock in any ship that would be a crippling loss for you should it come to an unfortunate end, but I assume you are just looking for good practices to follow when undocking in ships you can afford to lose, but obviously still wouldn’t want to.
As Wes points out below, instas only protect you one way. An insta-dock protects you at the destination. It won’t have any impact on your origin. An insta-undock only protects you at the origin station and won’t have any impact once you reach your destination.
So true if the cargo would portentously cripple the Capsuleer, then it’s best to fleet up with the ganker fleet and learn what they do since you’re already thinking of being ganked then might as well allow concord to gank you instead!
Even with insta docks you can and will be scanned at gates. Also if this is the character you fly with I guarantee someone just read your post and went “deal, this dude right here”. In general, don’t AFK, tank your ship, know your enemies, don’t be dumb.
Yes, it does make me sad as I had aspired to one day pilot a freighter around. But now I just can’t image me being at a point where I don’t care about throwing away a few billion ISK.
I believe your right. But I’m looking at it differently. It’s the same reason for disregarding the 2s aligned and high EHP tanks. Don’t try and beat them at their game. Instead, make yourself less of a target. But that does cause an ISK per time problem. From that reddit thread mentioned above:
Basically in 0.5 you need to have 10k ehp per M ISK; and then they can still go cheaper.
This means I’d have to haul so little cargo.
I did waver on whether I should post this question. Too bad I wasn’t smart enough to realize I could make a new character to post and delete afterwards. Oh well, I’ll just be a little more careful for a while.
I should have mentioned, I believe that’s a typo. I think it’s actually 1K EHP per M ISK of potential drop value. That’s break-even (if RNG), not profit, and that’s in 0.5 space which is the worst case (since they can pump out more DPS before Concord arrives). It’s better in higher space where Concord is faster.
Which is still only rough, as different gankers will use different criteria for what makes a worthy KM. In the end, it’s knowing where and when the ganks are happening, and being able to avoid the situation, moreso that it’s “my math says I’m safe so now I can fly through Uedama no problem”.
It’s not hard to scout and move one system at a time to dock in NPC stations before breaking down the payload into smaller sizes to jump through the high traffic systems.
Maybe, just maybe, you could stand to imagine a bit more. It’s not fast, nor easy, but reaching a point where you can afford to lose a freighter is certainly attainable. I wouldn’t say I was ever in a position to throw away a freighter. The loss of one would have certainly hurt the bottom line in my case, but I could afford the loss. It wouldn’t have crippled me or have made me want to rage quit. Taking a calculated risk is OK as long as you have the means and the will to recover from a failure.
You might even consider working for one of New Eden’s shipping services and have them teach you how to run freight safely, if shipping is something you want to do. Just make sure that whatever you do, it’s fun for you. Your ISK will never leave New Eden, but your memories you can take with you anywhere. Make good ones.
The cost varies depending on the gank ship used and whether the ganker cares about security status. A T2 fitted 850 DPS Catalyst is around 13m ISK. For those who care about security status, the largest part of any gank is actually clone soldier tags for regaining status…which work out at about 48m ISK each. Each tag regains 0.5 of security status, and as each gank loses about a third of that then each gank ‘costs’ about 16m ISK in tags. So, overall cost for good T2 gank like this is 29m ISK per gank per ship.
That’s expensive for ganking the cheaper mining barges…but then I wasn’t ganking for loot but for a ‘keep out of our territory’ sort of message…and there were not many of us gankers so we had to have higher DPS ships. Many gankers will simply use T1 ships…and some don’t care about security status so don’t bother with buying tags. So there’s really no hard and fast rule.
But its not hard to see that if you are in 2bn worth of hauler then even a dozen T2 Catalysts ( plus tags ) for 350m ISK are well worth it if 50% of stuff drops.
As for insta dock…you’ll have been scanned at a gate long before you ever dock. There’ll be a ganker chain of comms all along the Uedama route, watching out for 2bn ISK haulers. Your best bet is to dock up in Sivala or the system before that and pretend to have logged off, and then log in again 15 mins later and make a dash for it. That’s no guarantee of success, but at least you’d arrive a little more unexpectedly.
And to be frank…THE best thing you can do is have a scout in a shuttle to look at the route ahead of you. Sometimes Uedama is packed with gankers…other times there are none at all. It helps to know which before you enter !
They can and do…but it’s really not as common as many think. I regularly fly all my combat ships to a new staging site, and I’ve seen every single type ganked at some point, even the 1.4bn ISK Nightmare. Probably the easiest to gank would be the logi ships…400m ISK worth each, unarmed apart from drones, and actually less EHP than a barge. But I’ve flown those right through Uedama without anyone paying attention. Then again…I always use a scout. And, the best defence is when nobody even knows you are coming.